Two of the more popular comedy subgenres of the past couple of decades have been mockumentaries and dark comedies about hitmen. With Killing Gunther (now available on demand and coming to theaters on October 20), writer and first-time director Taran Killam (Saturday Night Live) is combining the two with fantastic results. It’s a movie that wouldn’t work nearly as well in the hands of many filmmakers who might have concocted a similar premise. However, Killam displays a great understanding of tone and pacing throughout and perhaps most importantly of all, knows how to carry the idea all the way through to the end. As a result, an idea that sounds like it would work better as a short than a feature makes for a very funny 93 minute film.

Like its title character, Ingrid Goes West is a movie that will be dismissed and rejected by many. What many will understandably find difficult is that it defies easy categorization. Not content with simply being a dark comedy about a mentally and emotionally troubled young woman named Ingrid (Aubrey Plaza), it’s a film that dares to turn its cell phone camera back at us and we may not like what we see. From early on it feels reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy in that we in the audience may recognize parts of Rupert Pupkin or Ingrid Thorburn in people we know or maybe, to our discomfort, in ourselves.

There is a lot to like about Steven Soderbergh’s self-proclaimed, “anti-glam version of an Ocean’s movie.” The cast is terrific and manages to have fun with southern stereotypes without openly mocking southerners. The plot is cleverly constructed yet breezy in the right way and there’s an emotional weight to the story of the Logan family and their supposed “curse” that works well. But there is one fatal flaw that Logan Lucky cannot overcome. The film asks its audience to believe that Jimmy Logan (Channing Tatum) could orchestrate a heist worthy of Danny Ocean but it never earns that belief from us. While Jimmy may be a smarter guy than people realize, it remains too much of a leap to get from there to him being a criminal mastermind. It is unfortunate because as I said, there is a lot to like here.

When your job as a writer is to look at film objectively, it’s important to not get hung up on nostalgia. Thankfully, I do pretty well with that. I might have thought a movie was wonderful as a 9-year old but if it doesn’t work for me now I can’t trick myself into still loving it and I know that I shouldn’t try. If I’m watching a film I loved as a kid now for the 37th time it’s because it still works for me and it works for me in an entirely different way than when I first saw it. I feel that it’s important to be clear about this so you understand where I’m coming from when I say that 1984’s Ghostbusters – a movie I loved almost as much as life itself after I got it on VHS for my 6th birthday in 1988 – is my favorite movie of all-time. I hope that you’re ready to believe me.

I moved to the city from the suburbs over three years ago and in that time I’ve not only become accustomed to the cacophony of voices and viewpoints that imminently result from so many cultures, religions, and philosophies living likely in too condensed of a geography, but I’ve also become fond of it; so fond of it, in fact, that at this point in my life the prospect of returning to the homogeneity of the admittedly quieter and more spacious suburbs fills me with a sense of existential dread and horror.

At the start of David Leitch’s new Cold War action-packed spy thriller we are told that in November of 1989 the Berlin Wall came down but that, “This is not that story.” Instead, Atomic Blonde deals with MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton (Charlize Theron) and her efforts that same month to recover a microfilm which contains the identities of every active field agent in the Eastern Bloc. Lorraine is a stone cold killer paired with another MI6 agent in Berlin, David Percival (James McAvoy) to find the list and to kill a double agent known only as Satchel.

There’s a lot to love in Dustin Guy Defa’s 2017 drama, Person to Person. Immediately apparent becomes the film’s love for its space, its atmosphere, its characters. Like the very best of New York based filmmakers such as Woody Allen and Spike Lee, Defa sets a sophisticated-yet-somewhat-grimy filmic tone of concrete urbanism; a vibrant cinematic space cramped full of bustle and kinetic movement, all captured within considered framing and a vintage celluloid aesthetic, one keenly intent on reflective observation.

More than 70 years after its conclusion, films set during World War II are still produced by the handful year after year. Some are good, some are not, but it’s not often even amongst the good ones that a World War II movie truly sets itself apart from a filmmaking perspective. Christopher Nolan however has been setting himself apart as a filmmaker for the better part of two decades. With Dunkirk he has made his first war movie and it is an astonishing feat. Even more than that, it may be his best film yet.

Upon being asked after the release of the Dark Knight if he had a third installment planned, Christopher Nolan replied with asking ironically how many good third movies there were. Of course, Nolan eventually did complete his trilogy, whether it being against his better judgment or not depending on who one talks to. Throughout movie history, the essential functions of the third film in a series have either been as a fitting and satisfactory end to a particular storyline (Lord of the Rings: Return of the King), a disappointing but nevertheless conclusive entry (Godfather III), or a debacle so big as to necessitate a reset to the franchise (Superman III/Spiderman 3, etc., etc.). In anticipation of another highly-anticipated third film, War for the Planet of the Apes, this weekly series will cover famous third films, infamous third films and otherwise, exploring how trilogy-enders or other types of third films have functioned in relation to its series.

Rare is it for a film trilogy in the modern Hollywood tradition to satisfy its loyal audience and yet go beyond the expected. We’ve seen several high profile third films of recent (Spiderman 3 and The Dark Knight Rises come immediately to mind) not do this. They either leaned too greatly into what made their predecessors great, to the point of feeling like a retread, or they strayed far from the formula but with sloppy execution. Even the more successful ones, like Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, had their detractors, the common criticism often being that the narrative took too long, got too indulgent and exhausting in its attempt to be serious fare.